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I find it interesting how pragmatic companies and customers in the business-to-business market are when it comes to standards in infrastructure.

Unlike standards wars like VHS vs. Betamax or HD-DVD vs. BluRay in consumer markets, the fighting surrounding standards in wireless technology seems timid to non-existant. CDMA has prospered in the US and a few other countries alongside GSM, and the trend seems to continue in wireless broadband.

Most of the carriers are likely to go with LTE ("long term evolution") as their 4G wireless broadband standard, but WiMAX has already found a few adopters as well and is used by carriers already. From what I hear in the cellular network industry, suppliers try to cater to whatever standards carriers are interested in and don't participate in taking sides.

As a consumer, I hope that future cell technology integrates both standards to ensure interoperability — being limited to certain networks when traveling abroad seems anachronistic in times of globalization.